


…And Tony answers the damn phone

by orphan_account



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Civil War Fix-It, Fix-It, Light Angst, M/M, Post-Captain America: Civil War (Movie), Post-Civil War (Marvel)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-17
Updated: 2017-04-19
Packaged: 2018-09-18 06:39:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 2,686
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9372590
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: The phone stays silent for a long time, but someday somehow somebody will have to call (let’s make Steve do it).





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> First attempt at writing something decent. Post-CW fix-it, as if there’s not enough of that stuff already. Unbeta’ed, mistakes are all mine. Warning: OOC, not Bucky Barnes-friendly, sorry, author’s personal quirks.

***

 

_Tony,_

_I’m glad you’re back at the compound, I don’t like the idea of you rattling around a mansion by yourself. We all need family. The Avengers are yours, maybe more so than mine. I’ve been on my own since I was 18. I never really fit in anywhere – even in the Army. My faith is in people, I guess. Individuals. And I’m happy to say for the most part, they haven’t let me down. Which is why I can’t let them down either. Locks can be replaced, but – maybe they shouldn’t. I know I hurt you Tony. I guess I thought – by not telling you about your parents I was sparing you, but… I can see now I was really sparing myself. I’m sorry. Hopefully one day you can understand. I wish we agreed on the Accords, I really do. I know you were only doing what you believe in, and that’s all any of us can do, it’s all any of us should. So no matter what, I promise if you — if you need us. If you need me, I’ll be there._

_Steve_

 

 

***

 

Tony is in Steve’s room, at Steve’s table, with Steve’s letter in his hands. Words are blurring in front of his eyes, meaningless, he’s just so fucking tired, he can’t concentrate and still can’t bring himself to leave. “I know I hurt you, Tony’, Steve says in his head. “I’m sorry”. “If you’ll need me – I’ll be there”. Tony seats back in his chair, inhales deeply on 1-2-3-4 and exhales, again and again, trying to dampen the pain inside, and fucking circus monkey just stares at him with its blank eyes from a piece of paper.

 

The phone stays silent.

 

 

***

 

Tony looks back: cautious “Mister Stark?”, that very first spike of white, hot, eye-burning rage on the helicarrier, Steve’s first genuine smile (yay, shawarma!), his own words “I don’t trust people without a dark side” – and chuckles bitterly, yeah, Stark, you damn futurist, how’s that turned out for you?

 

Steve’s dark side is dark-haired and dark-eyed, Steve’s dark side has that 70 years old haunted look and strangely weak chin – Tony, a bit surprised by his own slight gloat, remembers how Jarvis told him oh so long ago that weak chin reflects a coward.

 

Steve’s dark side has 90 years head start, has pre-war Brooklyn, withered on old yellow-ish pictures, has icy ravine and Steve’s nightmares – and Tony realizes fully, that everything – be it sad little excuse of a “family” or movie nights in the Avengers tower, be it perpetual “language” or any other insider joke – everything is just a ludicrous, piss poor, fake copy of something that Steve searched for, ached for, lost and miraculously found again in this man.

 

Tony looks back.

 

The phone stays silent.

 

***

 

Pepper is the first one to notice it.

 

Pepper, his clever girl, too-good-for-him girl, who knows him like no one else, who was right there by his side, when Obadiah literally ripped his heart out, when he stood there and said “I am Iron Man” for the first time, when palladium poisoning brought him on the verge of death (yet again - well, job hazards, what you gonna do), when Avengers were slowly becoming not just a team of dysfunctional super-beings, but f…. when.

 

“I tried to reach out to him”, Tony tells her. “Even brought him a stupid peace offering, you know”.

 

“Even in Siberia”, Tony tells her. “Even then I still hoped that we can make this right”.

“I tried to stop him”, Tony tells her. “To stop him from tearing the Avengers apart. From leaving us, leaving ME, FOR GOD’S SAKE….”

Oh.

_Oh._

Pepper’s face is one big “O” at this moment.

“Pardon me if I don’t believe in your sudden onset of abandonment issues”, she starts then carefully. “But it looks like….” And then she stops, clearly at a loss of words, and that’s a first, of sorts – to make Pepper, who had to deal with his frankly ridiculous escapades for years, search for words. He saves her the trouble.

 

“Yeah”, he breathes out. “Yeah.”

 

And somehow it’s enough for her.

 

“Call him”, Pepper says. “It’s not okay”.

 

Pepper is right, his clever girl. But Pepper, with her impeccable suits, her sky-high heels, her perfect porcelain skin – Pepper never heard a sound of shield tearing through the reactor viciously, Pepper never felt how with every last beat of suit’s mechanical heart not just energy, but life itself escapes his tired body, drip by drip. Pepper never had to watch Steve choosing Barnes over him and walking away.

 

The phone stays silent.

  


 


	2. Chapter 2

***

Rhodey is the second one to notice it (and who else would it be, frankly, given empty Tower and sulking God knows where Vision who’s clearly become human enough now to not give a shit about something other than his own unfortunate and rather unexpected experience with a heartbreak).

 

It’s easier with Rhodey – always has been. Even now, when he’s still recovering, there’s no hidden misery in his eyes, no hidden anger or frustration, there’s just that stern look, that certainty that everything’s gonna work out just fine – even if he has to overcome some unfortunate circumstances first, he knows he’s gonna be able to do it, and it’s hard for Tony not to believe in it too.

 

“Don’t tell me you’re gonna put on that suit again”, he says (although deep down he knows, of course he knows, that Rhodey isn’t the one to back down), “You’re bullshitting me, right?”

“No, Tony, YOU are the one who’s full of shit here”, snaps Rhodey to Tony’s genuine surprise. "I don’t know if you got the memo, but there’s not gonna be a happy ending for all involved unless you somehow fix it, and you know you gotta do this sooner or later, just like I gotta work through this shit to put on a suite again, cause who else is gonna do it, if not us?”

“Why the fuck is it always ME who get to do this?”, asks Tony then, voice not even THAT raised, but Rhodey suddenly turns his head and looks at him, really, really looks at him as if Tony throws a full-scale tantrum.

“Why, for the love of Jesus fucking Christ, why would I possibly WANT to do something about that wannabe justice warrior who’d rather let everything go to shit and run away into the fucking sunset with his tragic murderous bestie then stop for a minute to actually THINK about what is it that he’s doing for everybody around him, after all we’ve been through, we, all of us, the fucking Avengers, he didn’t even think about tearing us apart, about what is it gonna feel like, what is it gonna be like, FOR FUCK’S SAKE I’M JUST TIRED OF HIS SHIT”

_Oh._

 Well, Tony clearly is in no shape for a rational grown-ass discussion, let’s just leave it at that.

As if.

“Seems a bit too personal, this argument of yours, that’s all I’m sayin”, Rhodey asserts quietly. “But you know the world doesn’t’ give a shit for your personal blues. Especially when it’s gonna need to be saved yet again”.

Rhodey is right, Tony knows that.

Tony didn’t forget what Thor said back then on the Helicarrier all those years ago – about a signal that Earth is ready for a higher form of war, - and he was right, that hammer-wielding, hair-flipping, mother’s-drapes-wearin’ son of a bitch, Tony knows it, he feels it, he is a damn futurist, for God’s sake, he knows that something’s coming, and the world needs them – the Avengers, Earth’s mightiest heroes, defenders, whatever. Still, he can’t refuse himself a tiny bit of childish pleasure.

 

“This world”, he says, “can go fuck itself”.

 

Of course, Rhodey doesn’t buy it. He just smiles and rolls his eyes, mockingly exasperated, and then offers him the exact same line as Pepper did – “Call him”.

Oh, for fuck’s sake. This line is getting old already.

 

The phone stays silent.


	3. Chapter 3

The very first thing Steve remembers is a sense of freedom. The genuine, true, absolute sense of freedom, liberating him from within, that feeling with all bridges burned, with nothing left behind, with only his best friend in his arms, no longer occupied by the shield. The sound of it dropping on the concrete floor is like a toll of a bell, like a sound of a door slammed closed – the sound of finality, the sound of “it’s all over”.

And then Tony gasps for air, lying on the floor.

The sound is quiet, almost indistinguishable against the roar of blood rushing in Steve’s ears – but he hears it anyway.

And then Steve’s heart finally, finally breaks.

***

The second thing Steve remembers is pain. So, so much pain. It’s gut-wrenching, it’s almost unbearable, it’s tearing him apart from within, emptying him and filling the hollow space where his heart is supposed to be - all at once. It comes in crushing waves as realization sinks in – it’s truly over. For him, for Tony, for something that he felt only hints of, for something that made him gasp at times in disbelief, for something that somehow clenched his heart now and then just a little when Tony smiled at him with that half unsure, half challenging little smile – for all that.

Steve walks away.

 

***

At first Steve doesn’t know what to do with himself anymore – there’re no orders to follow, no world to save, no friend to search for, no team to lead into the battle, no home to return to.

So Steve does the one thing he knows best. He allows himself to hope. He writes a letter.

They all return to combat training, weapon testing, running some tactical routines. Everyone knows the drill and seems eager enough to go through with it – even if just for the sake of distraction. And if, deep down, Steve’s still, against all odds, waiting for the reply, nobody needs to know.

 

And then Bucky goes back to cryo, and with him gone everything goes to shit.

 

***

Afternoon in Wakanda is silent and still. With haze heat vibrating ever so slightly in the air, the stillness is almost absolute – there’s nothing there, no sound, no movement, only heat. There’s nothing on a terrace of T’Challa palace – only silence and heat, there’s nothing for miles around – only silence and heat, there’s nothing in Steve’s eyes except cold emptiness of Siberian snowed landscape.

It’s Clint, unsurprisingly, who finds him – not Wanda, who tries to show how excited she is by an opportunity to explore this magical new world of Wakanda and the limit of her powers (only to hide in her room for hours and constantly trying to avert Steve’s eyes), not even Sam, who put up with him for so long but seemingly finally had enough. Hawkeye, though, level-headed, as always, looks like a man who’s determined to grasp the nettle.

The silence stretches between them as Steve waits for inevitable fallout, clinging to what seems like the last minute of mind-numbness before floodgate opens.   

“I retire for what, like, five minutes, and it all goes to shit”, Clint says, casually, as if continuing a broken conversation. “Not that I could actually do something about it, as it turned out.”

“So tell me, Cap”, he says, clearly aiming for nonchalant but somewhat failing – Steve can see the tension creeping in the corners of his eyes, can see how tired, even exhausted, Hawkeye really is and feels, abruptly, yet another sting of regret. “How did it happen, exactly, the discussion of the Sokovian Accords turning into a bitter domestic over Barnes?”

“It’s not… It’s not like that”, Steve is stumbling over the words, hoping to make Clint understand – like somehow it would fix his dialogue with Tony gone wrong ages ago.

“Seems a bit too personal, this argument of yours, that’s all I’m sayin”, Clint offers.

Steve can’t hold it inside any longer, and he knows that he sounds like he’s pleading, begging for understanding - “I would burn the world down to keep him safe.”

“Well, consider it burned. What are you going to do next?”

There’s no possible answer to that – Steve’s world, as he knew it, ended with his shield on the cement floor of Siberian bunker, with Bucky behind the frost-stained glass, with Tony’s eyes, wide open and filled with horror, still chasing him in nightmares. So he just stays silent.

“What makes you happy?” Clint asks him, and Steve tries to suppress a harsh bark of laughter – how long has it been since Sam ( _seems like in a past life, long gone and forgotten_ ) offered him the same line? But there’s one thing that’s different this time – Steve knows, oh he knows, the answer now. It seems like Clint knows it too (and it’s really not that surprising, considering that Clint worked and fight alongside a certain Russian super spy long before Steve came into the picture), so he doesn’t even make an effort to look surprised when Steve hunches his shoulders, completely and utterly defeated, and answers with just one word –

“Tony”.

“Kinda figured that one.” Clint’s half-smirk reminds Steve of Natasha, and he misses her fiercely, but there’s nothing he can do about – there’s nothing he can do about anything at this point, and it’s killing him even more. Star-spangled man with a plan… Yeah.

 “You fucked up, Cap”.

“Yeah… Kinda figured that one.”

“Call him”, Clint says. “It’s not okay”.


	4. Chapter 4

***

Steve looks back: that very first one, half acknowledging, half challenging, “Captain?”, overwhelming wave of irritation on a Helicarrier, pushing Steve forward, closer, closer, into personal space, “ _overpower him, make him step back, make him shut up, make him give in”_ – who else could make him forget about self-control like that, if not Howard’s son? – lifeless, still face, eyes suddenly opening and glowing with life, and “Go for it, Steve” with warm chuckle, and careful “Are you all right?”, and his own “I will miss you, Tony”, back on the Avengers’ new base. Tony…

Tony is – warm smiles and sad eyes, long elegant fingers and strong shoulders under threadbare cloth, Tony is contradiction, Tony is pure energy – alive, sparkling, almost palpable, almost sweeping Steve off his feet.

Memories are unfolding slowly, one gentle stroke of a brush after another, and it’s a torture, and at the same time there’s something poetic about it – it’s like watching from a far as the world comes crushing down in slow motion.

And it’s almost ironic – how the whole Steve’s world narrowed down to one person, and it’s not Bucky, this time, not like that – never been like that. “When I woke up in this era, I had no one, nothing”, he thinks. “Tony… You gave me a purpose, somewhere to belong… you gave me a home. And I’ve burned it, burned it down”.

 

Steve looks back.

 

The phone stays silent.

 

 

****

And then comes the day when T’Challa finds him – on that damned terrace in the afternoon, just sitting there, as if unforgiving Wakandian sun can burn his guilt, and his regret, and his sorrow – everything that’s left inside.

“Captain”, T’Challa nods slowly, regally, merely acknowledging Steve’s presence. He stands, perfectly still, but Steve realizes that, for a change, T’Challa has something for him – something more than just polite questions about his team’s well-being.

 “The greater forces are in motion”, T’Challa says calmly, grimly, like foretelling some sort of twisted prophesy. “The tide is rising. Soon our friend will need all the help he can get. Soon the humanity itself is going to need us, united.”

Suddenly everything is quiet – like, obeying its King, the whole Wakanda stills, no motion, no sound. And Steve just stares at him, stupidly, while T’Challa turns to him, and then, without any condescension, with something reminding guarded but genuine compassion in his dark gaze, says -

“Call him. It’s not okay”.

 

***

Steve presses the “Call” button like he throws his Captain America shield – the same precise, controlled move leaving no room for doubt, - but his fingers tremble ever so slightly in time with dialing tone.

 

… And Tony picks up the phone.

 

 

 

  



End file.
